Lee Zachariah, pondering the big questions of life
Last year, I posed – then answered for all eternity – that all-important question: if you could be anyone from history, who would you be?
Now it’s time for a tougher one, a more esoteric hypothetical: if you could invite any three people from history to dinner, who would they be?
Oh, that’s easy, you’re thinking. Jesus, Plato, and Bach.
Slight technical problem: this is utter bullshit. You wouldn’t invite any of these people, you total liar. Bach spoke German, Plato spoke Ancient Greek, and Jesus spoke Aramaic. You’d all be sitting there for hours trying to figure out how to ask for the salt. How scintillating that would be.
You think I’m being too pedantic. I get that. ‘Those three people are dead! If we can resurrect them for the purposes of this anecdote, can’t we just make them speak English?’ Well, not if you’re working to the Three Dinner Party Guests internal logic. Sure, you can make them speak English, but if you’re comfortable changing their chosen language, perhaps you’d also want to make them understand modern vernacular or pop culture references. Think about it: you don’t want to change the way you talk, so if you happen to say ‘lol’, or make an Earth-shattering point about what should have happened with Ross and Rachel, it’s going to be difficult if Plato is still stuck on season seven.
So, in order for the dinner to be even remotely comprehensible, you’ll keep making changes to these people until Plato sounds like an enthusiastic Arts/Philosophy undergrad, Bach talks like the keyboardist from The Shins, and Jesus is just some hippy who recently found Himself.
Sure, if you were out to dinner and someone actually asked you which three historical figures you’d have over for a meal, you’d mention these people to sound cool – although, these are pretty stock standard answers, so you’d probably mix it up a bit with Buddha, Nietzche and Antonio Salieri – but you wouldn’t really have any of these people over for dinner because you’d have nothing to talk to them about. And they’d have nothing to talk to you about.
In truth, you’d have Johnny Depp, Bear Grylls and Lady Gaga over, because you’re pretty shallow and think this party counts as ‘deep’. But you’re forgetting something: none of them would want to talk to you. In this scenario, you are by far the least interesting person in a room that includes someone who eats bug mucus on television. Even in your fantasy dinner, you’re having a miserable time.
The dinner party hypothetical really never works, because you either have to completely adjust the behaviour of the people you’ve invited, or you have to accept that the practicalities of such an occasion would render you utterly disappointed.
So how do you properly figure out an answer that not only sounds good to your hipster friends, but would actually work if a bored genie overheard you?
First, you need to get past the communication problem. Pick three people from relatively modern times, people who reached their peak within the past twenty odd years. This is important, for reasons of basic linguistic and cultural fidelity. Then, ensure these people have only one common interest that happens to intersect with your area of expertise.
I’ll explain.
Let’s say you studied criminology at Uni. (This actually helps with your desire to have famous people over for dinner, because you probably wouldn’t have too many friends of your own). You’ve studied serial killers, and thanks to the rigorous anecdotal coursework, you’re well read-up on all the big ones. You can speak intelligently about them, and you’re really in your own when you discuss such things in conversation.
But wait! Don’t send out those invitations to Charles Manson, Ed Gein and the Zodiac just yet, not least because you’ll likely end up as the main course*.
No, you need to find commonality amongst interesting famous people who won’t try to kill you. Therefore your three empty seats should be occupied by…
Sufjan Stevens: You need a famous musician in your list. That’s like a rule. Stevens wrote the song John Wayne Gacy Jr about – believe it or not – mass murderer John Wayne Gacy Jr. Sufjan will be suitably impressed with your expertise on Gacy, and will probably write a song about you when, seven hundred albums into his career, he gets around to writing an album inspired by your home state, regardless of your country of origin.
Jodie Foster: Foster fulfils your glamorous movie star quota, but also garners you plenty of cool points. She’s frighteningly intelligent, a brilliant actor, and a vastly underrated filmmaker. She’s best known for roles in films like Silence of the Lambs and Taxi Driver, both of which centre around the workings of the criminal mind. She’s certainly smarter than you, but you might be able to throw her a few fun facts she didn’t know. Also, you’ll probably gain some extra credibility points if you point out all the factual inaccuracies regarding the deaths in Bugsy Malone.
Chuck Palahniuk: He’s not exactly notorious as a writer of serial killer books, but what’s the alternative? Thomas Harris? Then you’d have to spend the whole evening trying not to say ‘Wow, did Hannibal suck or what?’ when what you meant was ‘How did you enjoy the soup? No, Palahniuk’s the guy you want. He’s a hip, über-cool writer whose stories generally focus on the bizarre and impossible. Rarely does a Palahniuk book not involve murder or an examination of humanity’s extremes. He litters his work with interesting factoids, so remember to bring as many of them up as you can. He’ll begin scrawling them into a notebook before the entrée’s half over.
So, how exactly is this evening supposed to work? Well, let’s say somebody brings up the art of songwriting. It’s obviously going to be a conversation in which everybody’s directing questions at Sufjan, so even if you don’t know anything about chord progression and ethereal hooks, you’re not going to appear any dumber than Foster or Palaniuk. This same principle will apply to conversations about acting and conversations about writing novels.
Eventually, when the conversation turns to you, there’s going to be a certain level of expectation. You’ve just had three really interesting discussions on what it’s like to be a brilliant songwriter, what it’s like to be a brilliant actor, and what it’s like to be a brilliant author. Now, everybody’s looking at you. Just what do you have to bring to the table, aside from all the food you’ve been serving?
This is where you pull out your degree in criminology. Suddenly, Jodie’s all ‘I discovered this fact when I was researching for Lambs…’ and you’re all ‘That’s mostly right, but in actuality…’, and Sufjan is like ‘Did you know John Wayne Gacy did this?’ and you’re totally ‘You’re right, and your song did a great job at mentioning his tendency to whatever’, and Palahniuk is utterly ‘I’m thinking of doing a new book about a guy who kills whoevers’ and you’re exponentially ‘Well, you should hear the infrequently-told story of whichevity-blah’, and everybody’s listening with rapt attention and the conversation goes well into the wee hours because nobody wants to go home.
And that’s how you do it. Sure, it may seem like an unnecessarily-complex equation for something so trivial, but if it’s worth bringing up, it’s worth getting right.
See, the point of this isn’t to actually have three famous people from history over for dinner. (Sure, you may have a doctorate in politics, but you’re probably not going to get Michael Stipe, Bill Clinton and Nigel Hawthorne over to your house. Or, in the case of Hawthorne, exhumed, resurrected, and over to your house.)
The point is that, at some point, somebody is going to ask you this hypothetical. And chances are that they have some sort of ill-conceived Jesus/Plato/Bach answer, so when you jump in with your pre-planned guest list, with ready-to-serve explanations and logical through-lines, suddenly you’re the most interesting person at this dinner. You’ve inadvertently achieved your goal, and in a real-life setting, to boot.
And yes, I am available for dinner. But only hypothetically.
* IT’S A COOK BOOK!
